Pre-fill Form Fields

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1

Hi -

I am using KNACK to record services delivered to program participants for a non-profit organization.

We provide services to individuals from different programs, at multiple locations. Fields include:

  • Participant Name (drop down)
  • Program (drop down)
  • Program Location (drop down)
  • Service Delivered (drop down)
  • Date (Today’s date)

I am looking for a way to pre-fill fields such as Program and Location to reduce the number of actions a staff needs to make in order to submit a new record.

The simplest way I thought about doing this was by generating different forms for different programs and locations. Such as a form for program A, Location A, a form for Program A, Location B, etc.

So, you would click on a form for say, Program A, Location A, and then the form would open with the fields form Program and Location already populated with Program A, and Location A.

Anybody know how to do this? Or accomplish this in a different way?

Jacob

2

Hey @Jacob1,

Here’s a couple of different methods you could try, all still utlising one form (I would not recommend duplicating the forms):

  • Include both Program and Program location dropdown fields, but filter Program locations to values connected to the selected Program on the form

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  • On a Program Details page, include a form that adds a Service connected to the page’s Program, and include a Program Location dropdown that filters based on the page’s Program:

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  • Similar to above, on a Program Location Details page, include a form that adds a Service connected to the page’s Program Location. You won’t need the Program or Program Location dropdowns here. You can then use a record action to log the connected Program.

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  • Use URL variables to pre-populate the form. This is a bit more advanced and probably not ideal in your scenario

Note that I don’t have the full context of your app, so it may be that none of these will work for your scenario! Let me know if it helps in any way.

3

Hi Stephen -

Thanks for your thoughts on this! In fact, I had originally explored the option you provided above - placing the form on the program locations page. This did allow me to reduce the number of drop-downs staff needed to select to record a service.

However, because we have so many programs, and so many different locations, it was going to end up in a proliferation of data sets for services delivered across many different tables.

This would create the challenge for computing how many services, across programs, and program locations, an individual had received.

The benefit of the single service-delivery table is that it allows us to quickly see how many services an individual has received ACROSS programs and program locations.

Can you think of another work-around?

Jacob

4

@Jacob1, The above four bullet points are about all the ideas I have, but I’d be happy to schedule a call with you, as I’m sure there’s some context I’m missing. Feel free to DM me.

5

@StephenChapman setting URL variables is not a Next-Gen capability yet. I do wonder if the setValue() would work (once it is fixed). What do you think?

6

@Kara, setValue() for sure! I’ll still need Jacob to confirm his page set up to see where the field values will source from before they are applied to the form. :slight_smile:

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